Aggies close regular season at home, looking ahead to Big West Championships
By THEO KAYSER — sports@theaggie.org
On April 25, the UC Davis track and field team hosted Sacramento State University for the Causeway Classic dual meet. Dual meets, which differ from standard invitationals, involve a dozen or more schools with only two teams going head to head.
The meet events began at 9:30 a.m., with the first portion of the meet hosting throwing and jumping events.
The first event was women’s hammer throw, with UC Davis Aggies claiming first, second and third place. Hailey Hernandez, a third-year sustainable agriculture and ecology major, won the event with a distance of 50.46 meters, finishing just ahead of teammate Ashpreet Kler, a fourth-year biological psychology major, who threw 50.45 meters.
The UC Davis women’s team continued to shine in the throws during the javelin, where Brianna Nunn, a fourth-year economics major, claimed another Aggie victory, throwing 33.68 meters. This performance was followed up moments later by undeclared major Harrison Hansen, who came in first place in men’s javelin throw. Hansen dominated the rest of the field with a throw of 47.36 meters, more than 10 meters further than second place.
The final throwing event of the day was shot put, where Nunn again claimed first for the women’s team with a distance of 14.66 meters. Additionally, Jake Joerger, a first-year undeclared major, won first place for men’s with a throw of 16.03 meters.
In the jumping events, more Aggie victories came in the form of the long jump and pole vault events. Third-year Daren Randolph won the men’s long jump, jumping 7.28 meters. Sarah Graessley, a fourth-year civil engineering major, and Aidan Hagerty, a third-year systems and synthetic biology major, won in pole vault for both women’s and men’s, respectively.
The latter half of the meet moved to running events. This began with the women’s 5,000-meter run, where Aggies came in first and second place. UC Davis teammates Lauren Villegas, a first-year communications major, and Dani Barrett, a fourth-year wildlife, fish and conservation biology major, battled out for the top spot. Ultimately, Villegas came in first with a time of 17:19:02, hardly edging out Barrett, who ran 17:19:42.
The men’s 5,000-meter went similarly, with teammates Zachary Graeber, a third-year computer science major, and Ethan Brooks, a third-year undeclared major, finishing fractions of a second apart, both with a time of 15:13.
After this began the 4×100-meter relay races. In the women’s heat, the Aggies were narrowly defeated by under a second, running a combined 45.95 seconds, just behind Sacramento State at 45.03. The men’s race soon after ended with another close Aggie loss.
The Aggies got back on track during the 1,500-meter race, taking first place in both men’s and women’s. Kayla Towne, a first-year psychology major, won with a time of 4:41 in women’s, alongside Jacob Lawrence, a first-year undeclared major, who ran 3:58.
The next four events were all won by runners for Sacramento State, who claimed victories in the men’s and women’s 100/110-meter hurdles, the 100-meter, 400-meter and the 800-meter. At the halfway point of the meet, Sacramento State, as a team, was leading overall in points, with their women’s team leading the Aggies by a score of 64-53 and their men’s team ahead by 54-49.
After running events and jumping events had finished, Sacramento State had finished ahead in team points, with their women’s team defeating UC Davis 87-84 and the men’s team winning in more convincing fashion by a score of 82-64.
The remainder of the meet saw a few more individual victories for UC Davis, as Maya Shinnick, a third-year undeclared major, won the women’s 200-meter, Kayla Rutz, a third-year managerial economics major, won the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase and Chance Tokubo, a third-year applied mathematics major, won the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase.
The meet concluded with women’s and men’s 4×400-meter relays, where Sacramento State walked away victorious in both. Overall, the Sacramento State University women’s runners defeated UC Davis 101-99, and the men’s runners defeated the Aggies 102-83.
The Causeway Classic was the final regular-season meet on the Aggies’ schedule for the 2025 season. Athletes will have two more opportunities to compete this season at the Big West Conference Multi-Event Championships on May 9 and, finally, the Big West Conference Championships on May 16.
Written by: (Theo Kayser) — sports@theaggie.org
